Toyah Lake Can Fill After Rain and Then Disappear

Toyah Lake can spread after a hard rain and lie bare again before the next storm. It is a shallow playa on Reeves County's west-central plain, so its name describes a basin more reliably than a permanent sheet of water. Evaporation can shrink the water or leave the ground dry for long stretches.

The basin still has a hard edge when the water is gone. Cliffs ten to forty feet high form its walls. Elsewhere, about 85 percent of the county is a broad, gently sloping plain. The Barrilla Hills stand roughly 150 to 200 feet above the surrounding ground, and the county's elevations run from 2,538 to 4,210 feet as the far south becomes mountainous.

The whole county drains toward the Pecos River through Toyah and Salt creeks and several named draws. Toyah Lake belongs to that drainage story even when its surface is bare. It is less a fixed blue shape than a record of the last hard rain, written briefly across the desert and then erased by sun and wind.